


The Act of Choosing

by tiredhealer



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types, Favour of the Scribes
Genre: Cedwyn asks Noa a question and gets many answers, F/M, Gen, aka the conversation that happened when the party was in the mines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29026620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiredhealer/pseuds/tiredhealer
Summary: Cedwyn asks Noa about marriage.
Relationships: VCR - Relationship, Vercinjetorix/Cedwyn
Kudos: 3





	The Act of Choosing

Pluto has a home. Not a house, where he rests whenever the wind blows him through the area, but a home. A place that has thread-bare patches on the rug because of how often it’s been walked over, a place with a portrait of someone he loves so no death can ever take the shape of her face from him, a place with comforts, a place that keeps pieces of him safe.

Cedwyn doesn’t remember what his childhood home looked like. If he thinks hard, he can conjure the rough shapes of it; the darkness of the walls, the wood floor beneath his feet, the space in the living room where he would sit with his mother to eat dinner on cushions. But he can’t remember the exact details. What did those cushions look like? Were they soft, or stuffed with thatch? What was his bedroom like?

He hasn’t thought about that place in so long. Whenever he thinks of Arishkanae it is one of three things: the dark, the water, and the way his mother looked wading into it.

Pluto’s home is nothing like that place. Here there is the warmth of the fire, the warm wood of the floors, the blankets draped over the couch. Were it not for the fact the residents of Bracehill would happily kill him without a second thought, he’d feel at peace here.

As it is, he watches the rest of the party leave with a feeling of unease. He spent fifteen years alone before meeting them, fifteen years of working alone and fighting alone and learning to watch his own back because nobody was going to watch it for him. And now he has them, seemingly forever if he’s careful. Forever of supporting Roddrik’s heavy swings with his own, forever of arching around Nalani’s spells, forever of taking a hit that would have been made for Vercinjetorix, of changing the angle of an attack to hit around Pluto’s spiritual guardians as they devour an enemy.

‘They’ll be fine,’ Noa says as he watches them leave.

‘I know,’ he says as the door clicks closed. ‘Just strange, not to be with them.’

Noa clicks her tongue as she keeps working on her knitting, the needles old and worn but well-polished, clearly well cared for. Her movements are as meticulous and precise as when she casts spells; quick flicks of her fingers, the blue yarn weaving together in the process.

‘You wanted to ask about marriage then?’

Cedwyn nods. Above them, the firelight flickers shadows across the painting of Pluto and Lillian. Strange, to see Pluto so young, younger than Cedwyn is now, than Cedwyn will always be.

‘We don’t have it in Arishkanae,’ he explains. ‘Or – well, we do. But it’s different. There is no marriage between individuals, only between brides and the lake.’

Brides like Vercinjetorix. Cedwyn’s hand clenches reflexively at the thought; of what was done to her, and all the other brides before her.

‘You marry the lake?’ Noa raises her eyebrows. ‘Ah, of course. Because it represents your god.’

‘It doesn’t represent, it _is_ her. She is the lake and the lake is her.’ _Ilya._ Even speaking of her now makes something cold slide its way down Cedwyn’s spine. She can’t be here, Pluto assured them of as much, and he trusts Pluto, believes him.

But he thinks of Vercinjetorix down in the mines, with the water all around kept out only by the walls of the cave. Would Helias really stop Ilya from striking at her if she wanted to?

He suspects not. Gods are gods are gods, no matter their name or face.

‘And everyone marries this lake god?’ Noa continues.

‘Oh, no. Only a bride, who is chosen after she competes against other initiates to prove herself worthy of the honour.’ 

Noa raises her eyebrows at him.

‘I’m aware how it sounds.’

‘Good,’ a click of the needles. ‘At least you’re aware.’

If he could blush still, he would. But he can’t and so instead he just huffs out a laugh and shakes his head, ‘You never question it when you live there.’

‘Of course you don’t, that’s how control works. Divide and conquer, keep them below you, so on and so forth.’

‘I suppose Bracehill isn’t that different.’

‘The world isn’t that different, dear. But marriage is,’ Noa clicks another line in her knitting. ‘For one thing, it usually involves two people and not a body of water.’

Cedwyn smiles. He likes Noa, for all her sternness. ‘I know a little about more standard practises. Pluto and Roddrik and their spouses, for instance.’

In the painting above them, Pluto and Lillian smile softly, serenely, young and in love and unshakeable. How it should be, he thinks, if you ignore the loneliness that hangs heavy over Pluto now. That’s the problem with promising forever, isn’t it? Sometimes forever isn’t the same time for everyone. Not in this world.

‘A sad end to it, in their cases I gather,’ Noa says.

‘Yes,’ Cedwyn nods. ‘But a happy start, which is more than Arishkanae can boast.’

‘So why not ask one of them about it?’

‘Well, it seems rude given that both of theirs are…’ Cedwyn trails off with dawning horror as Noa looks at him with raised eyebrows. ‘Your partner is dead, aren’t they?’

‘Very.’

‘I’m so sorry, we don’t have to talk about it.’

Noa snorts. ‘Don’t be. I’m not sorry – though he was, in the end.’

Cedwyn stares at her. He’s watched her incinerate people before, it shouldn’t surprise him.

And yet.

‘Oh,’ he says mildly.

Noa smiles as she sets down her knitting and reclines in her seat. ‘Indeed. Ask your questions, Cedwyn.’

Cedwyn nods and fumbles his way back to the question he’d wanted to ask when this whole conversation began, ‘A marriage like the one you had, how does it start?’

‘One member of the relationship proposes to the other.’

‘Proposes?’

‘There are many ways to approach it depending on the couple. How my husband proposed would not have been how Pluto proposed, nor how Roddrik did,’ she says. ‘Assuming they _were_ the ones to propose, of course. It could just as easily have been their partners who did the asking.’

Cedwyn nods. He wonders if he should be writing this down.

‘Given you’re the one asking questions, I assume you want to propose?’

‘I – yes. I think so. I don’t…Since we don’t have marriage in Arishkanae I never thought of it, but now with Vercinjetorix I look at her and I know I want to be with her forever. And that’s what marriage is, really, isn’t it? Forever.’

‘Sounds as if you already have it figured out without asking me,’ Noa says. But he’s learning, and the pinch around her mouth means she’s not annoyed, she’s amused. Endeared, maybe, if he’s feeling bold.

‘I know how I feel and I know what I want,’ Cedwyn agrees. ‘I just don’t know how to ask or what it entails.’

‘It can be simply telling her what you told me and nothing more. Tell the girl you love her and you want to spend as long as you can with her, not just as adventurers, as souls thrown together in this heap of a world, but that you _choose_ to be with her. Marriage, ultimately, is about choosing.’

‘Choosing,’ Cedwyn repeats softly. He thinks of Ilya, and the darkness of the cell under Scribestown and Sanjing leaning over him, the last heavy beat of his heart. He did his choosing a long time ago, seven times over, a lifetime over. ‘I do choose her.’

‘Then say that. Say you want to spend forever at her side as her husband, as her partner, as the one she chooses in return.’

_And if I wake up, I’ll be with you?_

_I hope so._

She’s done her choosing too, he thinks.

‘And do I have to do anything in particular, when I ask? To make it a proposal?’

‘Well, sometimes the asker goes down on one knee. And there’s the ring, of course.’

‘The ring?’

‘The ring is used as a symbol of the promise. You would have a ring when you ask and she would accept and wear the ring to show she accepts.’

He should be writing this down.

‘Does the ring have to be a particular type?’

Noa shrugs, ‘Some people have one specially made. But it’s symbolic, the ring could be made of bark and it would be just as valid as one made of metal.’

One specially made…Cedwyn smiles. Pluto could do that, couldn’t he? He’ll have to ask. He can’t imagine Pluto saying no.

‘Once you’re engaged you can be wed any time you please. Days after or years, whenever you have the time. I don’t imagine you’ll get time soon, given all…This.’

‘Who can marry us?’

‘Most clerics learn about wedding ceremonies at one time or another, depending on their chosen deity. It’s traditional that weddings are a large affair, with guests in attendance, but you don’t need them. It can be you, your beloved and the cleric if you so wish.’

Pluto is a cleric.

He doubts Helias taught him much about weddings.

Cedwyn gives up on pretence and removes his notebook from his bag, scribbling down what Noa said and nodding slowly to himself as he writes. A ring. A proposal. A ceremony. A promise, before the world, and to each other. An act of choosing.

He’s going to ask her. He’s going to reach for her, as he has a dozen times, as he will a thousand more, and he’s going to ask her to chose him. Not for a night, or a year, but a lifetime. An eternity. Because this world has taken from them both, taken their childhoods and their families, taken their blood and their very souls. But it has given them life eternal. And if he can spend it at her side then, well. Perhaps the loss will all have been worth it after all. 


End file.
